Preliminary Programme

While the preeminence of Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) in the history of the sexual emancipation movement in Germany is generally acknowledged, his most relevant contribution to sexual theory has been overlooked: It was not his elaboration on the "indispensable makeshift" [Notbehelf] of a third sex, but his "doctrine of sexual intermediaries" [Zwischenstufenlehre] that was his most relevant contibution to sexual theory. In its most radical consequences, this doctrine deconstructs the traditional sexual binary and its hetero- and homosexual combinatory not because it assumes the existence of the third sexual alternative, but because it postulates a potentially infinite number of sexual constitutions. Since any given individual is a unique and irrepeatable intersexual variant that combines male and female components at different levels, human sexuality escapes, in the last resort, categorial subsumption.
As is shown in a summation of the Zwischenstufenlehre in "Race d´Ep" (1979), Guy Hocquenghem (1946-1988) is one of the few authors who seems to have been aware of the theoretical import of these insights. Nevertheless, in his most important theoretical work, "Le Désir Homosexuel" (1972), Hocquenghem connects Hirschfeld exclusively to the restricted issue of the third sex and its emancipation by limiting the sexologist to providing the contrasting background for the Freudian issues of normative heterosexuality and the Oedipian family that Hocquenghem tries to dismantle. Since the libertarian Hocquenghem is primarily concerned with articulating the idea of the "perverse" continuum of desire, in contradistinction to assuming categorial "interruptions" in this continuum, the question of the exclusion of Hirschfeld from this part of his argument is especially significative, for this argument not only does not contradict the meta-theoretical scheme of the "Zwischenstufenlehre", but could have found within it an encompassing sexological foundation. On the assumption that Hirschfeld's "essentialism" of radical biological diversity underlies and sustains the irrepeatable "constructions" of individual sexual identities, this paper elaborates on the question of how Hirschfeld's radicalisation of sexual individuality can contribute to a more stringent and forceful articulation of Hocquenghem's sexual utopia. (Show less)

For over 20 years Michel Foucault’s work has been a touchstone for feminist historians working on perspectives in the history of sexuality. Indeed no other contemporary thinker outside of feminism has addressed so many of feminism’s main concerns. A focus on power, agency and historiographical processes themselves is common to both discourses. Nonetheless, contention characterizes Foucault’s reception inside feminism. Feminist historians have debated the extent to which Foucault’s ideas are at odds with historiographies that privilege gender. At the same time, Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (Vol. 1), his work on governmentality, and Discipline and Punish have been mined by feminists to explain how sexuality is constructed and controlled (Lubhéid 2002). Other feminists have dismissed his ideas pointing to his “gender blind” history of sex and androcentric approach (Soper 1993). What is not disputed is that contemporary feminist historians who grapple with questions of power, agency and subversion to illuminate sexualities almost always push off from Foucault.

This paper outlines how feminist historians have relied on Foucault’s ideas to explore modern sexualities across national contexts. Strengths and limitations of these approaches are identified. Trends in feminist historiography after Foucault are discussed. Beginning with attitudes toward sex in late 19th century German, left–feminist circles, the paper examines the potential of a transversal orientation (Yuval-Davis 1997) for feminist histories of subcultural sexualities. (Show less)